In this episode of Do This, Not That, host Jay Schwedelson breaks down why the phrase “steal this” is dominating marketing across email, social, and content strategy. He shares new data on how using it can dramatically lift engagement—and how to apply it without sounding gimmicky.
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Best Moments:
(02:08) We want free stuff and we want BTS as the cool kids say
(03:17) Titles starting with “steal” have a 35% higher average engagement rate
(03:47) Subject lines with “steal” lift open rates 24% (consumer) and 28% (B2B)
(04:13) Call-to-action buttons should say “steal this strategy” instead of “learn more”
(04:33) “Steal this” content sees 40% more engagement in B2B, 80% in consumer
(05:03) “Steal this” taps into permission and generosity—two powerful psychological levers
(06:44) Repackage your best-performing content with “steal this” to make it hit again
(09:42) Not sure who needs to hear this…but don’t post that
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Transcript
What up? Welcome to Do This That, the podcast for marketers. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's dig into some tips and some randomness. We are back for Do This Not That podcast presented by Marigold. And I'm excited to talk about this one kind of marketing, this one tactic that is crushing it. And so many more business and consumer brands are tapping into it into this idea of steal this, the steal this format. You're like, wait a minute, he's going talk about incorporating the word steal into my marketing. I'm a very conservative B2B brand, or I'm a new consumer brand. I don't want people thinking of us in a certain way. You are missing it. I'm going share with you the biggest brands are doing this and it is crushing it. We have a lot of new data on how framing your offers, your content, your emails, your social posts, everything with Steal This is crushing it. Big brands, small brands, consumer, B2B are all leveraging this tactic more than ever. Cause what do we all want right now? We want free stuff and we want BTS as the cool kids say, behind the scenes. That's what we want. Transparency is the hottest thing in marketing, right? Audiences today, they want to see the messy stuff, the human stuff, the unfiltered stuff, but they really want to see what is working for you. What's working for them. What's working for the influencers. I want to do what the biggest companies are doing, what the coolest people are doing. And that's why tapping in to steal this works so, so well. There's a reason, for example, HubSpot. Why do they have their podcast episode that they released on their most popular podcast called Marketing Against the Grain? Why is their podcast episode titled Steal HubSpot's Go to Market Strategy with AI? Why would they title it that? Okay. Because they know it matches up exactly with what we're seeing in our World Data Research Group, that podcast titles and blog article titles, starting with the word steal, have a 35% higher average engagement rate. How about emails? Email subject lines. When you start your subject line with the word steal, literally the word steal on the consumer side, we're seeing it lift open rates by about 24%. And on the business to business side is lifting open rates by 28%. Just this week, Vogue Shopping sent out their email. What was their subject line? It was steal her style or Alo said steal his style. Okay. And on the business side, it's everywhere. Steal our playbook, steal these 10. If I said to you, steal these 10 subject line tricks, that was the subject line I sent out. You would open that and you'd be like, Oh, I want to steal his subject line tricks. That's what we want. Right? And it's not just the subject lines with email. You could do call to action buttons instead of your call to action buttons being super boring. Download, learn more. No, incorporate the steal this format into your call to action buttons, the long rectangular things. Okay. You have those buttons say steal the strategy, steal this framework. What about on social media? Social media posts promoting stealable content is crushing it. On the B2B side of the business side, when your social media posts are promoting content where it's all about steal, you're seeing a 40% higher engagement rate. On the consumer side, it is bananas. Steal this diet, steal this workout, right? It is 80% higher engagement rate when you lead with this idea of steal this. Steal this taps into two very powerful psychological levers. Number one, permission. You're giving the audience an easy yes. You're saying this is free. Take it. No guilt, no gate, have a good time. The other one is generosity and generosity equals authority. You look like the expert when you share what's working for you or your company, and you literally say, steal it, here you go. And you're not trying to sell them anything. You're handing them the answer. Steal this template, steal these AI prompts, steal our process, steal our webinar flow, steal our event promo schedule. Right? This builds trust. Trust builds engagement. Engagement builds everything. This is what we want to do. It's not a trick. It is a high value content repackaged as generosity. So this is a super easy way to radically boost your content engagement without doing much. And by the way, all you can really do, this is the simplest trick. Go and look back at your most well received, your highest engagement social posts, your email content that has done the best, whatever it is, repackage that into a steal this format and send it back out. You already have the thing to promote. Whatever is your most popular, turn it into a steal this, it will crush it. All right. Before we get into the absolute ridiculous portion of this podcast, I want to let you know that this podcast presented by Emma from Marigold. I send out billions of emails. I use Marigold and Emma from Marigold is an incredible platform. And you don't like your platform. I know you don't. Who likes their email platform? I do. Okay. And here's the gig. Just for listeners of this podcast, Emma by Marigold gave us a 50% off offer for three months. That's bonkers. Okay. 50% off. And I'm telling you, if you want better deliverability, you want better segmentation options, AI stuff, all of it, all you got to do is go to jayschwedelson.comemma, E M M A, to get your 50% off for three months offer exclusive right here. JaySchwedelson.com/emma. Check it out. All right. Let's get into, since you didn't ask, the ridiculous portion of this podcast. I always get annoyed. I get annoyed by everything. I don't know why, but I've been seeing some social posts and from people I'm following and I have to block people because they drive me crazy. So the posts that right now that drive me the most nuts and I realized that this week is when people go like on LinkedIn or whatever, and they start out their posts and they say something like this, you may have noticed, okay. When they say you may have noticed, I want to lose my mind. It will say something like, you may have noticed I haven't posted in a while. And then they'll go on and tell me what they've been doing. Here's a secret for you. I have no idea what you're doing. I have zero idea when the last time you posted, I barely know what's going on in my own life. Or they'll be like, you may have noticed I changed the tone of my posts. Nobody cares. No offense. I know that's rude. I know out there be like, Jay, you're so rude. That's not nice. I'm sorry. Nobody cares. Nobody cares about anything. They care about themselves. They could barely get through the day. So people say, you may have noticed don't do that. Or I'll give you other ones because I just get very worked up. When people say stuff like on their social media, let's normalize blah, blah, blah. Okay. And then they'll be like, you know, let's normalize. I don't know what the topic is they're about to say, but it's garbage because whatever they're saying let's normalize is already normalized. Okay. They're like, let's normalize something that's not normalized. I don't even know what they're talking about. Who cares what you think let's normalize. You're annoying. And then thing, here's what no one is talking about. Oh, I can't block instant block, dude. Probably everybody's talking about it. And you know, everybody's talking about it, which is why you're posting. Here's what no one's talking about. You're annoying. You're a loser. No one cares. And the one that I will never post, you will never see me make a post like this, by the way, what a rant this is. I absolutely cannot take it when somebody writes, not sure who needs to hear this. I can't, I can't handle it. Not sure who needs to hear this. And guess what? Then don't post it. Then nobody needs to hear it. It's not sure who needs to hear this, but you can do it today. You're a hero. Not sure who needs to hear this, but getting up at 4AM is not a flex. Okay, great. If you don't know who needs to hear, don't post it because you're lying. When you say not sure who needs to hear this, you're hoping everybody hears this. You're like, okay, I'm going to do something creative. It's not creative. It's annoying. It's annoying. That's me. I don't know. I get so worked. I get worked up. I mean, what's wrong with me? Anyway, listen, you're awesome. And in a few days, the June of Ventastic, my giant free virtual event that is all about virtual conferences, in person conferences, small events, big events, public speaking, sponsorship stuff, swag sales, whatever. Eventastic, the world's largest event about events. It is free. It is virtual. I think we only have like a few hundred seats left. You can go to eventastic.com, eventastic Com and register. Andy Cohen's going be there from Bravo. We have live skydivers that are going to be there. It's going to be wild. I hope you check it out, and, don't normalize anything. Right? You did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over. Subscribe to make sure you get the latest episode each week for more actionable tips and a little chaos from today's top marketers. And hook us up with a five star review if this wasn't the worst podcast of all time. Lastly, if you want access to the best virtual marketing events that are also 100% free, Visit guruevents.com so you could hear from the world's top marketers like Damon John, Martha Stewart, and me.Guruevents.com. Check it out.